Video Of The Week: Jay-Z And Kanye West (Watch The Throne)

For the third week in a row, I'm caught leaving Jon Spencer on the backburner for something that's more ''in the moment''...

In this case, the lead-off single from Watch The Throne, the Jay-Z and Kanye West monster that I still can't listen to in one sitting but does manage to have stand-out tracks you can listen to on the shuffle mode of your favourite music player.

This video for No Church In The Wild was directed by French film director Romain Gavras and depicts riot scenes (pitting protestors against police officers) which have been a mainstay of the past 3+ months in my city, Montréal - which had its 40th consecutive all-night protest last night, its 111th consecutive ''daytime'' protests of an ongoing student strike and general discontent for our provincial government - as well as countless others around the world.

I don 't know if things will change; oftentimes, when a glimmer of hope makes it through the cloud of bullshit that has plagued human history so far, the Powers That Be have either struck down harder or gotten to make The Oppressed believe they are the inevitable link to their security (see: France, May 1968). Rarely have The People bettered their situation for a ''long run'' (say close to a century).

Sometimes The Bullies are replaced by similar assholes (see: Egypt, right now), a weaker link/puppet (Afghanistan 2003-present), visionaries with their hands tied (Barack Obama).

But more than ever, with 6.8 billion people on the planet and the ''1%'' owning all of it being closer to ''0.0001%'', the words Jim Morrison used in Five To One are starting to sound realistic:

  They got the guns, but we got the numbers.
  Gonna win yeah, we're taking over.

 But I digress. I find the following video much better than the song it's supposed to support, nowhere near as catchy as Niggas In Paris, and the lyrical content nowhere near as direct or thought-out as, say, those of Ice-T/Bodycount (Cop Killer), N.W.A. (Fuck The Police), or Public Enemy (9-1-1 Is A Joke, Fight The Power).

It is, however, a good step in a good direction, and if it gets its listeners to think about the world they're living in for even a minute, it will have served Humanity some.

Everybody is A Fucking Nazi

It has existed as far back as I can remember: the late 70s, the 80s, the 90s...

Every single time someone who is prone to exaggeration disagrees with someone, it's what they resort to. 'That Person' is Hitler; his supporters (or staff) are Nazis.

In 2003, in his Quest For World Domination, I mean the War On Terror, George W. Bush invaded his second country in 18 months - a country of impure, coloured, backwards, retarded, living-in-caves-and-having-sex-with-animals people, according to his press releases.

His opponents compared him to Hitler. Of course.

Then Hurricane Katrina happened, and people hated him so much that, for some inexplicable reason, he went from the worst human of all time to, just, racist - or, as Kanye West put it, he doesn't like black people.

Speaking of black people, one of them was elected to bring grace and intelligence back to the White House. He came in with the worst deficit of all time, the worst economy, two wars that were quickly going nowhere... and while some people complain he hasn't made enough changes, his opponents seem to rather want to be in yet more wars, have less freedoms, more Patriot Act-like laws, have the rich pay no taxes at all and the poor no services at all. And when they're not adding Hitler moustaches to his pictures, they're taking a happy waive out of context to make him Nazi-ish:

Oh, and Hitlerizing figures isn't only for American politicians - in this column, Texan douchebag/idiot (but not Nazi) Gil Lebreton, who probably doesn't even realize he has French roots and likely thinks the French would still support the Nazis if they were invaded today, says the display at the Olympics reminded him of Berlin, circa 1936, although he is obviously too young to have actually covered those games - he's likely only seen images out of context. Anyhow, he says the Canadian Patriotism - clearly, unlike American Patriotism - is close to Nazi-ism. This despite the fact that our cars don't have Canadian Flags as bumper stickers, convenience stores don't sell flags nor have any on their rooftop or property, that half our stores don't allude to our country...

And, by the way, I'm not one myself - I'm actually quite the opposite, I don't really consider ''Canada'' to be my country. I'm a Montrealer first and foremost, and if I had to choose a country and set its limits, just about where borders are at the moment, I'd be a Quebecer - just not with the leaders we have at the moment. But that's beside the point. And so is the fact that Lebreton is a complete moron.

The point is that no one is fuckin' Adolf Hitler. Hitler went to war with a whole continent, killed millions of humans including a few million Jews, specifically, and he instilled terror among even his own people. Joseph Stalin killed an estimated 60 million of his own people. And no one's a fuckin' Stalin either.

At best, Bush is a fucking retard who was manipulated into being Richard Nixon. At worst, he is George H.W. Bush's son, heir, and the Worst President Of All Time. At worst, Obama is going to fail at being Martin Luther King, and at best he will be Nelson Mandela.

Notice how neither is Hitler.

Same goes for the Vancouver Games: they were a celebration of the things foreigners have come to expect from Canada - beavers, mounties, aboriginals (despite the inability to actually see any on their trips), more than the diversity of the inhabitants, the richness of the natural resources, the fact that they promote discussion rather than conflict in almost every sentence they utter.

Just like if Americans hosted the Olympics showing blatant racism, fat people, terrible beer with little to no alcohol content, celebrated five-patty hamburgers, wars for oil, shopping malls, pollutions and waste of water and food, instead of the ideals that (once) made the U.S. of A. a great country. And even that wouldn't be Nazi-riffic.

Leave Hitler alone. By speaking his name, you're lessening the plight and deaths of millions and soiling their memories.

No one is Hitler. Except Gary Bettman - that short fucking dictator has to be brought down, for the good of All.